


white as tar against your berylline heart

by CharismaticEnticer



Series: four and six and eight [1]
Category: Die Anstalt
Genre: Cults, Dreams, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Other Ships Not Mentioned in Tags, POV First Person, Pet Names, Present Tense, Prophetic Dreams, Psychologists & Psychiatrists, Sex, Symbolism, Unconventional Format, Wing Kink, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:09:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22507594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharismaticEnticer/pseuds/CharismaticEnticer
Summary: Then the pain stops, and the voice is ripped from my throat, and the floor sinks, and the roof opens up to the aforelit night, and they furl free with the sound of crackling aluminum, and the discarded world sees me and stares... And I know we are glorious.A tale of wings, and the lengths a doctor will go to share them.
Relationships: Dr Wood (Die Anstalt)/Undisclosed
Series: four and six and eight [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1619947
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Things to remember:
> 
> * To the old readers: not everything is identical.  
> * To the newcomers: it's not always like this.  
> * Only a fraction will start with the full truth right away, even if they don't know they have it.  
> * If I'm going to crumple artistically, I might as well make the decline magnificent.  
> * There are unpleasant realities here.  
> Die Anstalt © Martin Kittsteiner.

_Denn er errettet dich vom Strick des Jägers und von der schädlichen Pestilenz. Er wird dich mit seinen Fittichen decken, und deine Zuversicht wird sein unter seinen Flügeln. Seine Wahrheit ist Schirm und Schild, daß du nicht erschrecken müssest vor dem Grauen der Nacht, vor den Pfeilen, die des Tages fliegen, vor der Pestilenz, die im Finstern schleicht, vor der Seuche, die im Mittage verderbt._

**Psalmen 91:3-6**

They defy all bounds and conventions of common sense and come to me in a dream.

Not that there is a 'usual' for such gifts of grace. One can't summon them through speculation, of course I understand that; put your skepticism away. Yet - well, one would think that were I to gain true wings at all, they would unveil themselves the second I emerged to my screaming metal birth. That they would mark me even more distinct among the many that filled the factory, so young and yet so aware of his own place in the world. The mother certainly would have made note. But delayed they are, nonetheless, and in dreams they nonetheless arrive, melting from unconscious thought to -

I am getting ahead of myself. I should begin, as all my wanderings did before, at the door.

It is opening night at the gallery. The front hall chokes itself with visitors, bathed under clouds of pale yellow sweat to echo the summer moon. Whispered conversation looms overhead to snake between mouths, across ears, until - by chance - a glimpse at my creaking hooded visage; then they gasp and part in unison, like glass, to let in the distinguished guest. I can't help but roll my eyes at their scrabbling. I've seen it all before, in shades far more varied than this, and there's no visible guarantee writ in the walls that this time the charade will end and the place will stay open afterward.

Though it does mean, at least, I know just when to step to the side to avoid the bellhop's ineffectual grasp at my coat. I scarcely even register her look of regret anymore. Disgusting. They make my skin crawl, the lot of them.

I pick a corridor, this being the half-lucid phase of things where I usually pick a corridor. The specifics don't much matter, all paths lead to _that_ in the end, so... left, let us say. One arch, one window, and green bears down instead, tart and crisp in the air. This is better. I was getting faintly sick of the smell of urine. Not that the canvases reflect it: indeed, they remain stark through shadows, perfect in their immortality.

In their portraiture. They're as bored with the game as I am, it seems. Each of my forebearers, my unknowing teachers through crumpled page and droning audiobook, have cut to the chase and filled the frames they normally save for dream's end, eyebrows raised behind the long line of pince-nez. I have just enough time to huff out a breath through my frost-tipped blue, a sort of 'You can't fool me for long, Sigmund', so to speak, before -

I see.

I see my wings.

Among the interplay of basic skull structures and tones, meshed against themselves, the black on blinding white printer paper sticks out like a sore thumb - besides the fact that it takes up much of the opposing wall. Oil splattered across senselessly, in a parody of abstract art? A fool might think thus. But a PsyD is no fool by design, and to me, the symmetry's immediately clear, and then the symmetry _within_ symmetries, halved and halved and 'n'd and 'n'd again, fractal Fibonaccis. And no oil could feather like this, anyway, soaking into its background and yet not appearing to scratch the surface at all, rachis overlapping vane, vane melding into calamus.

I step nearer on unfeeling feet, they grow; I hold, they grow further still. Were there a border before, they've reached beyond it now, curving around each bump on the mintish brick. Visibly. From every angle, they move and pulse, out then in, then out, then in a little more, and with every breath a new journey begins in a neglected patch of pale.

Rorschach would quiver in envy, if he - and the acrylic faces around him - were still behind me. But what need have they to stay, next to the wings? The rest of the gallery might as well be dust.

...no gallery. No glass. No protection.

The thought's barely rung through before they're on me. They grab at my limbs first, pinning them to the ineffectual cushion of my body; I'm knocked to the ground. Pins and needles on one side of me, the crawling of the pen strokes on my other, conflicted frenzies increasing across every part they can reach. They dive, they rise, they thread me up with silver strings, they - STRIKE!

For four eternal seconds, I am nothing but a scream.

Then the pain stops, and the voice is ripped from my throat, and the floor sinks, and the roof opens up to the aforelit night, and they furl free with the sound of crackling aluminum, and the discarded world sees me and stares...

And I know we are _glorious_.

Dawn cracks in through the edges of my mind like a corkscrew; apparently I forgot to close the curtains. I shift against my will under the sheets until I'm out. A great pity, to leave the most interesting interpretation of my slumber for a long time, but it has to be done. A doctor's needs must, morning or night. And it'd do me a world of good to write it down before my shift begins and it's swiftly forgotten.

Tackling in the usual order then. The sheets, straightened. The mug to take my medicine, collected. The bathroom door, pushed open to ask the mirror within how I can best prepare for the day ahead.

...we are caught up now, I should think. I am just as I was when the world shifted, china shattered on the floor, steadily aware of a second presence in my room. You are obviously lost, half-awake, full of questions. And what of those hypnotic wings that affixed themselves to the knots in my back?

Well. Here they are.

They are the day after _you_ were, incidentally. Do you realize that?

* * *

Time beats on around those shards, as simply yet as Gordian as the lives it carries within; and enough of it has passed by the time we see each other again (in a more formal setting by degrees) that my new… acquirements no longer startle me. It doesn't take me more than a second to remember that the latest flicker of night to catch my eye is an intrinsic part of me now, and not, in fact, a reminder to tidy my head up or an onset of visual snow.

Yes, they no longer surprise. But amaze? I doubt they'll _ever_ cease doing that. There is much I've learned, and yet much I have still to learn, about -

But there will be more than time enough to dwell on these things later. For now, you are here again, as am I, with the constraints of my profession in dire need of attention. So. To business.

Is the plan.

In practice, all the intended trails of our extended back and forth only spiral out so far before hitting a feathery wall. As you properly introduce yourself to me, and I to you, my wings naturally wish to get in on the act, shuddering in greeting before I can stop them. A survey through medical histories is obscured by them, on high or on paper, until this pamphlet feels remarkably abridged.

Even when it isn't left to me to talk, they find a new way to insinuate themselves. Did you know wings make sounds when not in flight? Mine certainly do. Being grounded doesn't stop them from stretching in subtle ways as well as great, and they stretch oh so _very_ much. Each invisible muscle cracks as a bough does when hit by a bottle of flumazenil. Folding itself back into place is not unlike a tape recording scuffed; pushing out, a paper bag. Perhaps, as they sprang from a similar canvas in my dream, they need to reflect it every which way now? Whatever the reason, it's very distracting to hear them looped over your confessions of how you're settling into the daily life of this institution so far.

Distracting to the finest possible cause, but distracting, nonetheless.

It's thus a relief, for all of us, when our initial meeting in my bathroom inevitably comes up again and I have actual _cause_ to discuss them with you. Brushing off your concerns about the cup and launching into a treatise on them comes easily; in return, they quieten for a while, lax in the verbal spotlight.

At first, you struggle to remember them. Understandable - were it not for the evidence, and with meetings thus far infrequent, it'd be easy to dismiss it as your own dream, would it not? That you claim to still not see them when I actually point them out to you is a fine enough joke, I admit, but one best only told once. Accordingly, you drop that particular line when I present them again; it's as though the scales fall from your eyes as they scan them from end to end, down to me to... what?

...don't look so smug. They positively dwarf _you_ as well.

After that, you make no attempt to stem the flow of questions. You ask if I've attempted to fly with them yet - and yes, somewhat. There aren't many places to fly _from_ in here, but there has been the odd attempt to get me off the ground (albeit spontaneous, and usually after one of your peers tried to give me a heart attack).

You ask if I have trouble sleeping with them - and not anymore. The first night was the worst for their danger reflex and their flailing about; now, they know where the bed is once I'm in it, and adjust to suit. They radiate neither heat nor chill, but simply presence, which helps.

You ask if I have gone through this before - and no, I think I'd notice if this were my second pair in as many years, don't you? Sarcasm aside, if you mean different but similar incidents by this, then no, never before have I had such a dramatic gain.

You ask if all this bothers me - and not at all. Such curiosity can, on the right sort of person, look particularly good, and it looks good on you.

(You ask if I mean 'look good' figuratively or - oh _hush_.)

You ask tentatively if you can touch them.

Every cell within me objects, flaring out - and then further out, off course, as the cells without don't do the same. They crest particularly high and loud in affirmation, spreading my shoulders after them, determined to impress… their 'minds', it would seem, are already made up.

Fine. You can make contact - but on their terms. They find you, you don't find them.

An unsteady nod from you, and I loosen the reins, and -

their search for you ends almost as quickly as it begins. And even then, I suspect they had to slow themselves down to keep you sated. Their embrace of ebbs, flows, tendrils, gravitates immediately to your hand, slightly cupped, and it's as though you grow upon it a second glove, mapped perfectly to each microscopic hole and bump. You tremble there, and beckon the whole arm closer; they pull with you, directing the movement in their own experimental way.

All too eager to learn, I mutter, not entirely certain which of the two I'm talking about. A wry grin from you, for _you_ know that.

And from then on, I know, too, that you're falling in love with me.

* * *

It isn't long after that that I start dreaming again.

The first few nights after the border was crossed remained starlessly black for the most part; and the only light that qualifies the clause is that on my side table, turned on when the rustle of nothing woke me up once or twice. The thought did occur to me that perhaps, having earned my wings through my formerly-perpetual nocturnal struggle, its backdrop no longer served any purpose, leaving what remains of my destiny to he who wakes. I suppose that's a moot point now.

To my relief, last night's resurgence doesn't reset the loop, nor send me back to the unswung door. (And _you_ should be grateful too. I wouldn't be discussing this with you if it had.) Indeed, it begins near exactly where the last left off: in front of the canvas from which my wings leapt to life.

Much of the earlier crowd has dispersed. No chatter fills these halls; the first sound I hear is instead the off-beat chiming of the hour. It rings clear despite its distance, for the roof is still gone. Vivid pinpricks along the streets dart in on the breeze, mingling with the unripe tangerine that lit me before, yet overwhelmed by, of course, the white void upon the wall. The portraits that surround it are back as well, I can see them in the shadows - though, in truth, I've yet to fully look.

The frame's crooked.

_Why_ is the frame crooked? There's a roar within my chest, a thump of indignity. Is this the cost of progress, empty avenues and a home askew?

Calm. Calm. It's not thus just to spite me. The subject migrating mediums must have knocked it out of place, or perhaps a jealous bystander swiping at anything that might surpass him. Just a simple matter of putting it back. That will restore the balance - perhaps even get the crowds to return, the awe to bask up again.

I will my wings, my talismans of glory, to reach out and do the deed, ease it into place as they've eased you... and nothing. Not even a glint against my vision. I squeeze into fists and shout the command into my own soul a few more times, but no luck - and only then do I realize where they are. They're wrapped to my waist, a squeeze so clingfilm close that I scarcely registered it, only my lungs knocking against the proverbial corset. (At least they know not to crush the life from me with their touch. There is that.)

A sigh through gritted mouth. I'll have to do this myself. In one swift motion, I shift what remains of the picture to its original right angle, then step back, a good distance. It'll be easier for them to see it now, to spread wide, to luxuriate in the echoing cries of admiration and, and, anddddd

it's tilted back again. Right. Once more I close the gap, redirect it to parallel. It falls. Once more I shove it, with perhaps a bit more force than necessary. It falls, and this time I swear I hear a mockingly mirthful _click_ as the corner hits the ground.

Very well! I won't help anyone - or anything - that refuses to help itself. Stay broken, if you're going to be that way! The cleaning staff can rip you to shreds for all I care; I already have what I need from--

...tch. So _now_ it obeys. A thin, pale line cuts itself across the corner, precise as from a penknife even in its jagged shape. It almost looks like what my wings could be now, in and of itself.

I wonder. And when I'm done wondering, I peel back the reborn edge and step through - and then there is no room for me to do anything _but_ wonder.

No adulation. No people, at all. No gallery behind me.

The world is a beach...

...and that's where it ends. Now let's see where you begin, bewunderer; what do you make of it?

You don't respond to me at first, though I know you've heard me. Thoughtfulness creases your brow, and you start tapping where you sit, as though the answers will come to you in Morse code. Take as long as you need: this pause is all the better to see ourselves with.

Then come your theories, or at least the preludes to theories. ...yes, definitely in that order. No, they never moved the once, not to that degree. ...well, true, I suppose I could. But I'd rather ask _you_. ...come now, you're no stranger to my thought processes, are you? You couldn't - expertise? A bold assumption to make that there's such a thing as an expert in dreams, bar me, and Freud, and Kindermann to an extent. And even they had to start somewhere. ...Yes, Freud still counts. If anything, wouldn't the opioids --

don't change the subject! There's only so much adorable chatter I'll put up with, even from you.

Naturally, it ends up being a very fulfilling discussion when we finally get around to having it. We both agree that the change in time, then place, is ultimately for the best: if I had lingered and looped after all, I'd run the risk of losing these, and then what would I do? (They flitter upon the word.) You note dissatisfaction both with the frame and in it, though with what we cannot settle, for there was no replacement face, not even my mirror image in the windows, for it to distort - and remembering that detail sets us on a tangent as winding as my arula, about how an absence of another integral piece might be in itself an absence of the whole, at least in your eyes. (I find I can't stop looking at them.) The color of the sand brings us back on track, and the rasp of salt, and what little scope of the sea I could grasp before my abrupt jolting to life; you itch your palm. (Don't crush too tightly now. My wings will need room when they join you.)

You pay particular attention to the sharp-seared lightning strike that let me through to that sight in the first place. The idea of a penknife leaving the mark makes sense to you too, though you can't imagine who'd be using it from the other side, given my... influence. If it was at the foot of the door, dropped from someone's grasp, that'd be one thing, you say, or even in a group like the scissors in -

And then you clasp yourself down, as though you've let loose some terrible secret.

Oh? Now you've really caught my attention. A notebook, laid nearby, enters the fray with open pages. What plays through _your_ mind at night, then? I'll indulge you a while.

Not that you treat it like an indulgence. Words come falteringly from you, a jammed spigot, a half-hearted IV drip. You speak of the blades, naturally, swivelling to a finish line built of crescendoes. You speak of your own beach, distilled to individual grains at the bottom of a glass, or perhaps a cup of Libra. You speak of academia, of the contents of books distorting before your eyes, thudding your tongue with dyslexia. You speak of hands and their diseases. All of these, described so well once you're used to talking about them. Especially the figure in black that directs them all.

It's at this point I inject my only question, asking - idly, despite its importance - if **I** have ever shown up in your dreams since I met you.

No response comes to that, not verbally. None needs to. The faint paleness rising along your skin, the resumed tapping, the subtle squeezing together of your legs… why, these tell me all I need to know.

I am faintly surprised that you don't ask why you weren't in mine afterwards. In retrospect, I probably shouldn't be.

* * *

For a sharp mind, you can be so slow sometimes, liebste. Should you walk in the therapy room and see the art supplies strewn about, see me perched high enough that the resplendent light catches me and mine, I'm not likely to ask you to file my tax returns.

Even with the brush gripped tight and the canvas propped up, you're hesitant; I can see it in your semi-smile. I don't doubt the why. Your last attempt _was_ rather... substandard, for you. You neglected to add them all together, as I recall, expected me to believe my reflection a flightless _stick figure_. But you did have much more on your mind at the time, and you bore the punishment well, so I forgive you. And I made sure we have two confined hours ahead of us. With that time and a steadier stroke, you'll yet meet the potential I know you have within.

...Well? You know the task. Get to it, if you please.

Within minutes, the room is full of little simultaneous scrapes. Yours knock against the parchment, leaving wisps of charcoal behind; mine, mostly against the walls.

My wings make… interesting models. They are exemplary in a lot of ways, so it should follow that this too comes naturally - except it involves the one thing at which they _don't_ excel: staying still. I try to limit their movements to the slow and the sensuous, in the smaller intermingled ferns that you couldn't possibly hope to capture on a plane of fifty feet; but, at times, it does take a far more concentrated effort to stop one chipping a hole to the outside world than it should.

That might be what gave you such trouble before. Who, before photography, could truly paint a meteor in motion? ...still, better restless here than too restful elsewhere, I reflect, remembering our nocturnes.

You wisely say nothing, and carry on.

At the twenty-five minute mark, you've switched to metallic paint for the accents, and the subject comes up from my mouth again. Why _do_ they contradict in this way?

What, the silver bits, you ask? They look pretty good to me. But I can do gold if you--

No, no, I mean dreams. Why do they behave so counter to the dreamers? Consider me and you. Failure is not your stock and trade, most of the time - you know that - and yet in sleep you can't succeed. My astral self tells my wings to move and they stick in stubbornness; in life, they're perfectly pliant... or at least the many parts that aren't outside my command.

It depends, you suppose. How tragic does a dream have to be before it becomes a nightmare? Even the simple ones come from some kind of fear, and I guess for u- me, failure's it.

I scoff. You fear the beach, then? The yin of water and the yang of land?

And plastic pollution, don't forget.

Hah! Fine, you have me there. And the rest of your point is sound enough. Used as I am to my prizes, I do have a - a sense, say, that _they're_ not used to _me_. That they sought to be the dominator, and not the dominated, from the moment we entangled in the un-gallery. There's even a degree to which they are, I theorize; they lifted me heavenwards, not vice versa.

But, (and here, they shift audibly, no longer lulled by my placation), **but** , they do not have the complete control they desire. Not over me. And the dream, as their original bedrock before the forever home of my presence, becomes the basis of the best rebellion they can and will think of, until I break them in... or their irrepressible nature finds another way.

In that regard, they are more like me than I'm willing to admit.

Your face is wan, your brush picking at an unfilled corner. I can relate to that, you say; there's times and things I'd like more control over too - whatever I need to lose of myself to get it.

You, me, and _every_ understuffed life we encounter. Hm?

Not really, comes the meek objection, no.

Fair enough. Only the smart ones, then. The ones fit to seek it. The ones who know their type of control would make a difference... I glance at you, one such to another; you again swallow your words and keep etching in a new standard for silence.

Actually, I add upon the half-hour, you may have been right. Work in some of the gold after all, will you?

The rest of the session, as much as we can call it that, verges on the uneventful. We converse; you get hung up on a particular detail; one of my limbs plummets into paraesthesia in a far more standard way, by which time you're fortunately done with it. The only real interruption is when someone bursts through the door to demand more of your precious time; but a stern glare from me, a few words from you, and he's gone.

And then the work of art is finished, with ten chimes to spare. I heft myself off of the bed in aching gratitude, flit to just behind your shoulder, and get a first look at the masterpiece you've...

...started. Certainly. Much of me is, indeed, captured better than the rushed sketch of before. My head is reflected, shimmering. My body is given the _right_ sort of girth, if too generously. The posture is impeccable, now that you've had so thorough of a chance to copy it from sight; the palette, simple, but deftly chosen.

But the wings, the focal point of the whole piece? Still little more than lines. They curl correctly, to be sure, but they don't _curl_. They're limited to the space you were given, crushed between dimensional edges - one even has to twist physics to fit on the square. Far from being worthy of all the stillness and poise, they've been rendered...

ordinary.

I sigh. Ah, well, künstler. You tried.

* * *

My my. They are being positively indefatigable today.

You must have gotten all dressed up for their benefit - new color? new smell? - because they _will not_ let you go. My wings have looped around you for as long as you've been in their reach, tangled themselves in your crevices, signed their namelessness on your exposed skin in a joking John Hancock. I've scarcely felt them draped across my own arms; in fact, were it not for the needles still erupting from my back to keep them pinned, I'd doubt they were still mine at all.

Of all the creatures, I didn't think they'd be the ones to need a lesson in loyalty.

Then again, _you_ are mine, to some extent. Maybe we can call this nothing more than the behaviour of an attention-starved sp... **pet** , getting itself acquainted with its master's inevitable affianced. You certainly don't mind the attention, either - dare I say you're used to it, even? You certainly don't cry out when one rippling plume gets caught in the crook of your elbow, merely brushing it away as though a dewdrop in dusk.

Just the same, I will tell them off for clinging to your face so much, trying to rid you of breath and me of sight. Your feelings are all too clear, but it's nice nonetheless to look at you and be reminded.

...you really are so gentle with them. You always have been. It's un... it's not unlike you, I lie. Merely not the way you usually express it. When it comes to everybody else, the frothing masses in that distant hall - they don't have the hold I have. You're a little more guarded, a little more aware of where their clumsy, heavy limbs land. A little more distant from them all. ...from one.

Do you see the way the straggler looks at you? Because I doubt he sees himself. If he could pick up the pieces of my mirror and know from them how negligible he really is, how cloying in his desire for you to glance his way and validate his existence, he'd stop in a heartbeat. Sew his mouth shut, too, I should hope: doesn't the bleating grate on you, sanfter? The insubstantial fluff gushing from it like fire? Certainly not enough to it to carry a pencil, much less a conversation.

You want better than that, surely. We are worth _more_ than that. Look at me.

Look at me. Please for the love of Christ look at me look at me look at me

And ah, there's that familiar image: picture perfect us. Entwined in a room through a grasp much less intrusive, for all that it's engraved everywhere. Through voices far more robust - my timber, your banter, their rattle. Hours could pass and they'd still be sounding, and that's how you know, is it not, that you're engaging with things more fitting of your attention than a line of impatience, crashing and barging through to tear you apart in a way my wings could nev--

\--oh? Hm...

You didn't feel that, did you? I just - I just abruptly wondered what would happen if they _were_ somehow rougher on you - if you would still be as tender... tch. Stupid. An errant thought, no further harm. To you.

...only now, I can't get the idea out of my head.

Of them changing countenance on a dime, brushing you aside, and veering instead to your collarbone to spread it and its beyonds wide, out, down, to the bed like a strap. You'd try, just a bit, to break free from them, fearful that suddenly you'd said the wrong thing or not enough of the right; but then I'd follow their trail to you, straddle myself above you as you yourself are splayed. A wish, and they'd pull again, trying to detach your arms in their haste to ready you for me, and by then, with your vision so full with their frayed expanse and my face, you would yield. Of course, you'd know it's just a part of things, with me at the helm.

After all, you love me.

So you'd strip for me. Or no, you wouldn't - you'd let me do that quite particular deed. Like penknives and canvasses before them, my wings would cut at the fabric laid 'cross your chest, rutting it to uselessness, the remains suited for nothing more than a patchwork quilt. Not that we'd need a quilt. These versatile things are more than enough cloak for our modesties, my own loosely discarded as though interrupted, yours wriggled out of with each thrust you can make in such a state. Devastating, your thighs, bare as they'll be; skin smooth as the cream that burrs the cat, shadowing under my touch - not _their_ touch, _my_ touch, tips pushing bruises into beauty. Of course, you'll do nothing but open up at the honor, expose your soul to he who needs it.

After all, you love me.

So I'll encapsulate your whole. On one end, they'll continue their desperate crawl with relish, writhing into ever more of you with no flimsy armor to get in the way, finding what makes you squirm the most, refinding, again and again. On the other, there I'll be, grounding myself in the folds of your hips, grinding in your wake, nipping the bud of you. With each twitch, a new lash, a new featherweight crush in kind, a new sound of you struggling to swallow your cries in daylight too broad and quiet to keep them contained. All just a warm-up, you understand, you'll understand completely, and save the best for later. And when that later comes and all your halves are a mosaic of flagellations, only then will I peel back to realign and see you in full and in empty, all short breaths and pitiful little squeaks, already melting into pyrite for me.

Of course, you'll ache for more. Of course, you'll let me in. Of course, under the creaking of my absolute power, you'll corrupt absolutely.

After all, you love me.

You love me. You love me. You're here. You love me, you're here. You love me, you're here, you love me, you're here, you're here, you love me, you're here, you're loving me, you're here, you're here, you're here, you're here, you're

...

Zur Hölle damit. Yes, I do realize how distracted my mind is being, how distracting my wings, how unsavory my thoughts. But I'm not - you're not the type to leave them pure, are you? Not today. Of course you're not. Not with that face twisting in uncertainty, not with those shoulders shrinking from the sudden tightening.

Not with your presence. That alone leaves me thoroughly, emotionally, lackingly of a better word... fucked.

So I ask you: why _shouldn't_ they fuck you back, moppelchen?

* * *

Yet again, I... dream?

No cause for concern of mine, I know. And it wouldn't be now, were it not the middle of the day. I definitely don't sleep; the last I saw of conscious form, it was askew on the mat, and I doubt I am _so_ withered with age that I can doze off while sitting up. And this is no renewed imagining of what you will become for me, clearly. You're not even in the room, leaving me to mediate my meditation.

But here I stand all the same - on my beach - watching intermingling waves lap against the shore - and my wings are tape against my sides once more.

So then, yet again, I dream.

At first I think that I haven't moved since last I was here; my back does still face where the gallery is no longer; and yet my body's weary with the evidence that I must have. Prints mark the perimeter of water and ground to my right, cut-outs of heels and toes marking 'danger, do not cross' in braille. Were it not for the grit on my own, I'd be barefoot. So what is tricking me, then: senses, or sense?

Why, self-fulfillment, for I decide now to complete the walk. If another me did start and then abort a path in the gaps between slumber, I might as well finish it on his behalf. With the tools I have.

The ocean is thick and restless. With every step, it tries to keep pace, steer itself to a direction it was never meant to follow, but its efforts avail it naught. Blue and green frustration froths, turns its bed to loam underneath it; I can taste it in the air... and much more besides, suddenly, for a bed in a more literal sense makes itself manifest with a clatter of purple and white. Along its upper edge, a row of lips, crassly parted, as though one would be lured by the charms of barnacles.

A ship as this would suit someone else well, I shouldn't doubt. At least the me that walked before, with no better way of travel. Maybe even one for whom that better way is currently _still_ not cooperating, however minutely or grandly I try to shake them into motion under the shadow of the hull, however much I need to climb above it and beyond it and onto the wind that they could get if they would - just - _try to -_ seriously? _Of all the times?_

No response. I glare at my inertia. The sea continues to churn its own woes, and that in turn earns it my pity - I feel something of that myself.

I end up bypassing the bed altogether.

Of course, being a dream, it doesn't take as long as the slow stewing of sun dictates for another object of interest to crawl its way to me. A single stroke of rain, lashing _up_ against my face, makes it twitch - bat - and the next thing I know, a bird is on the coast. Too petite to be a gull. Not marked with the telltale pitch of a crow. Its beak hangs open, a gasp caught where no man can pull it out; its feet splay behind it, its knees practically knocking together from the effort; each one of its hollow pipes curve and collapse and aim - however abrupt the angle - for mine. If I could see its eyes, doubtless they'd meet mine in rapture.

It's bowing. It's _bowing_ -

and for the first time since my waking world caught up to this one, my beautiful constructs spring free. The cobblestone's gone from my mouth and my chest and my system, full instead of triumphant whistling laughter. The water writhes in protest; what do I care? No more will I be there to see it suffer.

I bid goodbye to the walk I barely knew, whip them to the rocks, and soar.

Gales flow against and through these thick charcoal lines, bringing with them the numbing of cold without its actuality. Each flap, a peal of lightning, resonating in the clouds around me as higher and higher I go, further and further across the arrogant aqua. I stare at the sky, and it stares back, its twilight blush overcut by freckles of the only constellation I know. Algenib, Matar, Sadalbari, Alkarab.

I expect nothing to find me up here. Obstacles are for the earth. So when the tower emerges from a corner turned on a whim to give me an idea of where endlessness ends, it takes me a second to hover to a halt in surprise - _not_ alarm. It looms, this collection of stained walls and translucent glass, as though it... wants us to be impressed? A figure in black throws itself against the pane facing us, making about as much of a dent as a toy hitting a wall even as it flails about. It, like its cage, is unfamiliar to me.

My company knows what to do. Hurricanes spring from their ruffling, bolts from their barbs, their extended mass from my body as my mind takes but a second to direct. _Child's play._

They lunge, and they strike... as do you all.

We hit as one. Each stacked box barely has the chance to resist, one toppling the other until all that remains is dust and our swooping, spiralling bodies in the newly-vivid neon. Once much of it clears, I blink out what remains and take the chance to properly look at everyone. Or, rather, what everyone possesses: each patient has a few little sprouts of their own, jutting and fluttering accompaniments to limbs, or in one case in place of what limbs existed before. Not quite as jet black, not quite as intertwining, but echoes of mine all the same.

Yours, glanz, are the second most splendid, next to their creator. And you know that. You look upon them with awe, upon the others with an easy patronization, upon me with - what else? - love. With this last, the crowd follows suit, differently devoted, but ultimately the same message flickers in every gaze.

Thank you, come the cries as we rise up in distant tandem - and I hear what you call me, what, perhaps, you always have - and in an instant everything is so _clear_.

You know your stations. You fall. The wings that started it all even out to catch the updraft you create. They let me float between warmth and light, exultant.

I was wrong. This is no dream, nor fleeting fantasy. It is _reality_ , as I can, as I **will** make it for all who linger below. It is destiny, malleable only to me. It is a name, it is a title.

You - every one of the playthings in this building - Flügelvereinigung.

Me - Dr Wood - _Übermensch_.

* * *

No thanks, says one. I already have some. They're huge, and they're powerful, and I can't fit anymore on me.

For this, I have an answer. Do your wings come from heaven-spun silk? Do yours yield to the greatest mind you've ever known, lift you up to look him in the face and bask in the privilege? Or are they naught but crumpled cardboard shapes that baulk at the slightest drop of saliva? Be realistic. Take mine, and you will taste _true_ power, if only for as long as your weakness will let you.

A hemming, a hawing, a glance at my example, a 'let me think about it'. Fine, then.

No thanks, says one. What's the point in getting something I won't remember later down the line? Something that'll leave in any case?

For this, I have an answer. Holes in the portrait of your mind or not, it'll take a million of them combined to strip it from its frame. They will still be there when you return, rest assured, ever undulating outside of your peripheral vision, ready to drag you to a mirror or set themselves aflare to sear your skin at a mere word. Take mine, and you need not worry about being alone ever again.

A hemming, a hawing, a wistful blink, a 'let me think about it'. Fine, then.

No thanks, says one. I am NOT breaking the rules for this one. I'm in enough trouble, they're going to kill me if I step out of line.

For this, I have an answer. Arrogant of you to assume they care enough about you to kill you, don't you think? Nor do wings break any rules - they _are_ a rule, unto themselves. They rewrite the whole book from the spine outwards, each unruffled joint a thousand new pages upon which to pin your morality. Take mine, and bend them to your shape, and rewrite your world for me.

A hemming, a hawing, a search for invisible instigators, a 'let me think about it'. Fine, then.

No thanks, says one. I'm sure they'd look very impressive, but I'd have no idea where to put them. You keep them.

For this, I have an answer. You don't need to know where to 'put' them, that's the beauty of it. They will 'put' themselves, find a sliver of you that is best to pull you up from and latch there, and it'll be like you never were without, like, indeed, you were created an Icarus. A better guide than any meddling fingers could hope to be. Take mine, and you will have taken the hardest step.

A hemming, a hawing, an ill-suppressed sigh, a 'let me think about it'. Fine, then.

No thanks, says one. You deserve them more than me. All I'll do is crash and burn, and who'll save those in the rubble?

For this, I have an answer. It is not you that needs do the saving, faithful Samaritan. I have more than enough breadth, half this very room, to take that burden upon myself. The only things you need to do are the tasks they'll whisper in your ear, and the promise of that alone will be enough for me to bestow upon you, not deserving, not worth, but your god-given _right_. Take mine, and know this.

A hemming, a hawing, a clacking of nonsense consonants, a 'let me think about it'. Fine, then.

No thanks, says one. I'm saving mine up for my special one, and I don't want to just give away someone else's hand-me-downs.

For this, I have an answer. What special one of yours - if such a thing even exists - would be impressed by your wings if you have no wings to start with? I know you've got _so many_ other things taxing your brain at the moment, but do try to pay attention. Take but a fragment of mine (for a fragment is all I'd give you anyway) - use that to charm them, lure them in. I'll handle the rest from there.

A hemming, a hawing, a changeless expression, a 'let me think about it'. Fine, then.

No thanks, says you --

\-- and for this, I have no answer.

You still talk. Of course you do. There is nothing spilling from me to stop you, neither from my mouth, nor the stoma your refusal cut beneath. You simply double down on the same chunterings everyone else has gushed forth, echoing them as though you are in _any_ way like them, repeating what you won't understand. You don't understand.

I don't understand.

Now, it emerges; now, it stops. What do you mean, you ask?

You know what I mean. You know what it means, that I reached them out to you. That I _have_ been reaching them to you, all this time.

I thought it meant, you fib, the same thing it always does. That we're getting to--

Always? Don't fool yourself. I don't share the emergence of wondrous wings to just anyone; do you think I do?

No, that's not what I -

Tell me, then: what _is_ the reason? Why turn all that we've shared through them away at the palm? Why, as their dearest devotee, step down?

See, that's the thing, you waffle. This wing stuff, it's starting to - it was okay for a while, even sort of fun, but -

So our awakening was just a game to you?

\- starting to feel really uncomfortable about -

Uncomfortable? About that which linked us, essence to essence?

\- comes up every time we -

They won't _go away_ just because you're choosing now to put up a facade.

\- won't stop touching me in a -

Because they know what we're missing. Now fill in that deficit, won't you? For you. For them. They're growing agitated, and it's your fault. They sense your betrayal.

You cry, what are you talking about? I don't--

_Are you blind?_ Deaf? Dumb? They're coiling, recoiling, growing maybe even, and with each coil a scratch upon tin and wire and razor blade, glorious, grating. They need a salve. They need _you_.

No one else wanted them, you stutter, this shouldn't bother you so much!

A paltry loss. I knew, on some level, that their minds were too weak for this, their wills too bent, but you… you were meant to be different. You were meant to be smarter, second in command. It's the logical extreme, isn't it? Of your love.

What?

Your _love_. Or do you not remember _everything we've ever had?_

I don't--

Mein gott, he's gotten to you, hasn't he?! _That's_ why you're being so obtuse. Damn it, I gave him too much _time_ , more than enough to spread his corruption. But don't worry, they'll get out what they can. I'll get out what I can.

You're not - Look. Look. I'm not playing along with this anymore. I'm...

How darling of you. **Nor am I.** Now accept what is yours or--!

Under chains of flesh am I and mine suddenly buckled, feet holding to nothing, ears harmonizing with all between them and beyond them in **no no** ** _no_**. Let _go_ of me.

Not until you calm down. You need to--

I need nothing but for you to take the blessing that I bear! Why can't you realize that, why?

You're scaring the--

Let them be scared. Let them tremble! For through that fear they know the consequence of defiance, they hear the consequence, I hear so little _beyond_ the consequence, it groans, it grinds, it pricks against the skin as they thrash a space into the shape around me, and it's all but background noise to the strain in your limestone voice as you lie and insist and _lie_ and _insist_ that

Th _you_ ey  
are _just_ not  
R E **_CAN'T_** A L

It takes but three beats against the wind for you to recognize what you have done.

Once: your haggard name slashes the air in a snarl, a choke, a roar. Twice: skeleton collides with swiftness, in a red wet thunk of the gaoler's jaw. Thrice: I break out - I surge forth - you are abruptly through the door - and during all of this, a promise snaps to my teeth like steel.

If you cannot see the majesty of my wings, then _you shall never see again_.

* * *

They know where you are.

Touching them was your felicity, my schatz. They bonded to you, you to them, us to us, in a way that can never be flayed from muscle.

Touching them was your folly, my flucht. For the same reason. You can make a maze of this place all you want, cast yourself with a bull's head if you must, but we know what lies beneath. They hammer in tune to your life force, from tip to tip - they drip with it - they _taste it_. So however far and fast you run from me, the only choice in the end will be to stop.

You will.

Don't pretend. I've had enough of it. And that's what that scurrying to just beyond my reach is: pretense, pushed out in one and all directions by a frantic, fleshy lump. It can't sustain you forever, you cannot dine on dissent for sheer dissent's sake. Sooner or later, the truth will set in. You know that. We'll see to that.

We'll see to _you_ \- your shadow, your scent, your essence, skirting at the veil. They've hunted you well, my wings.

They have all they need to collect the last of their desires. They have to. There's pumping along and inside and throughout, incessantly, bitter fuel to outlast even what you gave them. There's a new painlessness from where they've fused to my husk. There's music in the swivelling of the joints, a bassline to the symphony we're to share. [Can't you hear them sing?](https://youtu.be/kveUqEdOAhQ?t=2m13s)

You will.

The walls dig deep here; my determination, deeper. With every push against the ground a new door swoops by, mercifully unsullied by human contact... that I could be so lucky. I'd ask if they stand out to you too, feet pounding past, but, well. If it didn't fall to me to open your eyes, you wouldn't pound at all, would you?

Closer. Closer. Louder. You're not picking up your heels. They smack the floor in failed synchronicity with my buoyance; primitive, gravity-embittered things. Yet, still, you're fast, leaning against nothing to go as far even mid-stride as you're allowed, risking sharp turns. He _has_ seeded himself in you. And mark my words, when we are done, he's _next_ -

Acute angle to the right! A blink, and you're scarcely gone. No, no, not _that_ easily. I pivot...

...and erupt. My side spans out in milliseconds to catch the wall before it and I collide. It takes the bulk of the pain into itself, sharpening out - mountains, fountains, glass, cotton. Secondaries clench at themselves; the stems snap like firecrackers.

I don't slow for a second. Not with you so close to the biting relinquish.

You will -

_There_ you are. You've stumbled, naturally, tripping on your own treacherous shoe, panting. A swoop, a burst of speed, ought to - but then you're scrambling up and away again seconds before I can reach the goosebumps on your nape, to the... yes. Quite right. Left, let us say.

Sure enough, a corridor of verdancy and black and white. They're far smaller, and from the looks of the one you've knocked down not nearly so defined; but outlines of those who taught the naive, clipped creature I once was line the walls I skim nonetheless. Instead of the frame from whence they came, a window. Fury gathers over the forest.

My marvellous, enigmatic wings... they must have known all along it would have to come to this.

At its end, a creak, and we baulk for but a second under the rush of blinding frost: your desperate blinking eyes and ragged lungs have led us to the showers. One door only, easily slammed. Holy water runs down the walls in this place, this sterile chamber where nurses and men and girls undress and pretend to possess their own bodies. Yours has come to a juddering stop by a drain grate.

You, startling. Eye, immodest. I appear to have discarded.

You will -

Stop it! you shout. Bewilderment; I haven't yet done anything. Stop it, I can't do this again, I can't go through this again, no more, no more, no more.

Then accept my gift. How can something so simple _escape_ you?

You're flush against slippery tiles now, grabbing the nearest swing-shut tap so hard your palms scare themselves white. Do you think, if you pull enough, you'll reset your destiny? Find a door to Narnia?

Don't make me use this.

Why not? Go ahead. Break your seams with the effort. They'll accept you just as well wet as waxen.

I won't let you talk to me like that. I'm your--

_Du_ bist mein _Akolyth_ , and you shall _treat_ me as such.

Get _away_ from me--!

A ricochet rings hot in every corner. My poor right side is overworked, so it's to the left to take up the task, to siphon your resistance. You're smaller, afterwards. Your wrist bends in a strange way.

Do you see now? Where stubbornness gets you? This would never have happened if you'd just said yes.

You shiver the contrary. I'm - so sorry.

Even now, you try to deny us? You act like you ever had a choice?

I'm not - making it back this time.

_Defer_ , damn you. Accept your place, your dictated reality.

I won't - ever forget you...

You

will

**KNEEL.**

Then my obedient wings catch you in their embrace, and the scream is ripped from your throat, and - _Everyone heard the screams and screeds once the two left the room,_ shattered on the floor, steadily aware of - _but he was the only one brave - or reckless - enough to give chase._ rain pours, far too warm, much too late for them to rust - _He wasn't just going to sit back and do nothing, was he?_ the aforelit day, and they rip at your lips with the sound of crackling - _He couldn't let her be run down by the bastard like that,_ you're here, you're here, you're here - _not that she'd ever let him anyway, she was stronger than that,_ they dive, they rise, they thread you up with crimson strings, they - _but if she needed it he'd lay down his very life for her._ how did you become so much prettier in this storm, mein beut - _That's what true love does._ out then in, then out, then in a little more - _As it turns out, he burst in upon the idea being made far too moot._ why shouldn't they fuck - _The man was stooped, buck naked._ then in a little more, then in a - _Scratches on his blackened back._ with every br- _Blood on his blades._ then in -

_Hers, congealing._ then in -

_Dead. His saviour Carrie was dead._ then -

* * *

The summer moon hangs languid, apathetic, past the bounds of the cold carnivorous cage. I can move - just. One more step will send the hands crawling around my ankle again as it is.

I cannot shake the unaccountable feeling that we have failed.

We'll come upon the hill where we're to rest any second now. There. It rises, and so do we. Eye to eye with the bulb of the sky. It casts reflections into, oblivious to its speech.

I see.

I see my wings, white as tar against your berylline heart.

I see _your_ wings, black as stars against mine.

* * *

Where are you? I can't see you in here. I'm not even really sure where 'here' is. The moon faded long ago, and there's barely enough from the bulb to see silhouettes.

_You killed her._

I can hear, but not right. There's dialects in the darkness, and none of them are you. They speak too fiercely for that, they're nowhere near your dulcet tones.

_You killed her._

Yes, I've tried that, but they won't listen to me. Too busy with their own petty affairs to care about one such as me, it seems. And even if they do, they won't tell me where you are.

_You killed her._

Are you lost? I know I would be, if you didn't know - but that's the point! I need to find you to tell you what you don't know! It won't make sense coming out of anyone else.

_You killed her._

I saw them, you see. And I see them still and I know how they - I need to teach you how to use your wings, as mine taught me.

_You killed her._

It'll be a clumsy start, mein liebling, of course it will. But that's what I'm here for. You'll get used to them yet, once they let go of you.

_You killed her._

And, oh. You haven't seen the way mine have changed yet, have you?

_You killed her._

They're bigger. They were large before, you know that, you've always known that, but now... the ceiling is tall, yet still too short for them. I think they've broken in two.

_You killed her._

No, not broken. Bent, brittling, four and six and six and eight. And where they cross, the same cross, the equidistant crucifix - gott, mein küken, you'd swear they were red.

_You killed her._

I can't wait for you to see it. I can't wait for you to get here. Where _are_ you? Why is no one letting me out to look for you?!

_You killed her._

They're spouting nonsense, can't you hear it? It's making me retch. Those sycophantic Jungists, much too vague. Much too tall.

_You killed her._

They don't understand. None of them do, except you. You'll understand, when you see them, and that's why you need to see them, see what we can do if we just fly in sync...

_You killed her._

You need to see what you can become, what you can achieve in me. Just read the scripture of my wings and their blood and their bones.

_You killed her._

You need to let them coil around you, yours. Let them in, please, let them in, and we'll show them. Together.

_You killed her._

And I know we'll be glorio--

_You killed her._

**Shut up.**

_You killed her._

... I'm... underestimating you. You're already on your way, aren't you? You're taking the fastest current you can to catch up to me.

_You killed her._

Not the best idea, not for someone so new. But I can't get out to intercept, not here. So I'll have to trust you, I suppose.

_You killed her._

Bleib in Sicherheit, meine Seele. Mein Engel. Meine kleine Taube.

_You killed her._

Forget them, if it's distracting you from your flight. Those you're leaving behind. Why matter? What need? Next to the cosmos that await us.

_You killed her._

Do you think anyone of them would miss you if you didn't come back?

**_You killed her._ **

Do you think anyone would miss you if you did?

**_You killed her._ **

Do you think anyone would miss me if you did?

**_I killed her._ **

Do you think anyone would miss me if I did?

**_I killed ----_ **


	2. a vaguely clearer epilogue

"I said, do you think anyone would miss me if I did?"

"Did what?"

"Killed myself."

"Oh."

"Cus I've been thinking about it for, what, the better part of the week now? It won't leave my head. Just - making a clean slate, you know."

"'know."

"I mean, I'd tell someone first, the way you told me. Since that's all they care about apparently. Who told who. Then I'd probably hit the forest - do it there, so no one has to see it. There's probably a shack with a gun in there if I walk far enough, or a sharp enough stick to cut–"

"Dub."

"–sorry. ... I just. I don't think I can do this anymore. Keep carrying this much on my back, knowing what I do, knowing what I don't know... But that burden's the one thing stopping me too, cus deep down, like, _deep_ deep, part of me wants to think someone'd miss me. Do you think so too?"

"..."

"You gonna say something?"

"Oh, um, I was waiting for–"

"What?"

"Well, I don't wanna be rude, but... I think this was meant to be my session? Right?"

"What, I can't vent anymore? It's not like I can get it anywhere else."

"Yeah, but–"

"What with all'a last week."

" _Yeah_ , but Dub, I don't - if it's my therapy session, and you're the therapist, you p-probably shouldn't–"

"Oh, _I'm_ sorry! I didn't get the memo that _you_ make the fucking rules now."

"I'm not–"

"I didn't know I'd done such a shit job that you get to be in charge. You wanna be in charge, asshole? Do what I've gotta do right now, no prep, no coaching, nothing? You wanna add one more thing for Nadel to worry about?"

"Killing yourself would give Nadel a thing to worry about."

"Oh give me a goddamn break."

"A- anyway, it's only until she comes back. Then she - she'll–"

"She, she'll, she's not coming back, Sly. She's out there busting her ass making sure Kroko and that lot aren't swarmed by those police press parasites looking for the same stuff they've already said and everyone out there already knows. She's cleaning up a _murder_ best as she can, and we've gotta pick up the pieces she can't get and there's so goddamn _MANY_ of them, and it's... it's so..."

"..."

"Shit. Sorry. ... That, right there. That's why I can't do this. I can barely say I'm sick, much less heal the sick."

"N- no one's asking you to, Dub. But this isn't easy for us either. We're. We miss her too. And it–"

"I know. I know."

"..."

"Honestly, I'm shocked you don't."

"Don't what?"

"Want to kill yourself. It was your girl he killed."

"Dr Taube wasn't–"

"Close enough."

"...ja, close enough. And that's why I don't. I don't think she'd want me to. She'd want me, all of us, to get better for her. Or if not better - if W- Wood made it so we can't get better - at least closer to okay."

"..."

"You know what I mean, Dub?"

"Time's up. I'm gonna grab a coffee, if you want one in your room."

"Uh. N- no. No thanks."

"Suit yourself."


End file.
